‘Motivated vendor’: Major Guvera stakeholder looks to offload 5m shares in streaming firm
One of the major shareholders of music streaming firm Guvera is selling five million shares at a time when the business is expecting a “large cash injection”, it has emerged.
The shareholder, whose identity has not been revealed, is thought to hold around 10 per cent of the Australia-based streaming service, with the sale representing almost half the stake.
Lawyers handling the sale placed an advert in today’s Australian Financial Review, describing the individual as a “motivated vendor”.
Chris McArdle, principal lawyer at Sydney-based McArdle Law firm, denied the sale was indicative of a struggling company, claiming the seller simply wanted to unlock cash.
The shares are on the market at $1.90 per share for the first $500,000, and $1.70 for the remainder. They are available in one block or through a “negotiated proportion”.
“Guvera is a successful music streaming business with more than 10m million customers worlwide. The facts speak for themselves,” McArdle told Mumbrella. “It has a viable, intelligent business model and is profitable.”
He added: “We have already had calls from potential buyers, including existing shareholders”.
The sale price, if met, would represent a “comfortable” return for his client, McArdle said.
He stressed it was not a case of the seller decreasing his risk in Guvera, adding the Brisbane-based operation was soon to receive a “large cash injection”.
McArdle declined to reveal details but said the investment was expected from an international private equity-style business that has Australian operations.
The sale by one of its major shareholders comes shortly after Guvera closed its UK operation which it launched at the beginning of the year after acquiring Blinkbox Music from British supermarket chain Tesco.
Guvera chief executive Darren Herft said Blinkbox was placed into administration after a planned restructure became too difficult and would have required too heavy an investment from Guvera Limited.
McArdle said his client was “disappointed” and regarded the decision to close Blinkbox as having been made “too early”.
Guvera, which operates an ad-funded model, launched in Australia in 2010 but struggled to make an impact and was relaunched in 2013
It has since expanded to several international markets, including the US and India and is one of the sponsors of The Voice.
Comment is being sought from Guvera.
Steve Jones
Interesting we (or I) don’t hear much about this company.
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and look at it’s likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter (around 3,000) – not as high as you would expect from a co with apparently millions of users
And it’s profitable apparently? So doing better than Spotify then?
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Can he please explain how this business is profitable?????? , just have a look at last years profit and loss , it’s burning through investors cash like there is no tomorrow.
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Not to worry Tom. I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more about them at some point.
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These are a bargain, they normally go for $3 a share at the AMMA wealth seminars. Though 5M shares is only 2.5% of the 202M they have issues. The cash injection is likely a reference to the impending JP Morgan IPO of Guvera that AMMA have been spreading rumours of.
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I have a modest amount of shares in guvera and dont see this as good news. The majority of their users are allegedly from India, which is fine, but if the company has over 10M users as they claim, would they not get at least a small % of the press as Spotify, Rdio and others?
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@David they are not. Revenues for 2015 sub $AUS400k, Opex about 8M. They ‘estimate’ revenues for the next year as 125M! All the money comes from share sales, for which they pay AMMA. They raised 25M last year, and paid AMMA about 7M for it.
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Also, the 10M users is registered not active. 3M of those are lost with the UK business. They don’t publish active user counts. It’s unlikely to be over 1M though
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@Demotivated Creditor. You seem to know a lot about this company , can you tell me whether this so-called IPO is going to go ahead or is it just marketing Hype from AMMA
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Then why waste 6 million on buying blink box only to shut it down??
Wanked on about 2.5 million users
WTF
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AMMA spruking this for years, mabye they would like to buy them with the 7mill commissions? 🙂
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